The Unchaining Word F by Sue Hookway S
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
DISCUSSION RESOURCE The Unchaining Word F By Sue Hookway S Uncovering the Bible’s awesome power – in the campaign to end slavery and in the continuing challenge to change our lives and world today B Front cover: Farm workers, freed by the Special Group for the Repression of Forced Labour, queue for their first work permit, Brazil (Ricardo Funari/BrazilPhotos) Acknowledgements Bible Society would like to thank Nancy Odunewu for her advice on the text, IBRA for material on page 30 and inside back cover, and the following for their kind permission to reproduce photographs and illustrations: Ricardo Funari/BrazilPhotos, front cover; Anti-Slavery International, pages 6, 16, 17, 18, 22; CMS, page 12; Indonesian Bible Society, page 31. The Unchaining Word By Sue Hookway Additional material by Lindsay Shaw BIBLE SOCIETY Stonehill Green, Westlea, Swindon SN5 7DG www.biblesociety.org.uk Charity Registration No. 232759 © Bible Society 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the British and Foreign Bible Society. 1 Welcome Unchaining? No, it’s not a typo. Ever since Moses heard the call to be God’s freedom chaplain for a downtrodden people at the time of the Exodus, God’s Word has been setting an agenda for freedom and dignity. An agenda that sometimes clashes head on with self-interest and with all forms of exploitation. Two hundred years ago the Bible shook up the British Empire when a group of Christian abolitionists led the campaign to end the horrors and indignity of the slave trade. Even as swathes of the establishment and even sections of the Church tried to legitimise it. But Wilberforce and Sharpe, Clarkson and others had been impacted by God’s agenda which – correctly read – loudly declares every person’s dignity as people made in the image of God. As we move towards the 200th anniversary of the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, we look again at how the Bible impacted these campaigners. In the light of the continuing existence of modern forms of slavery – in forms of bonded labour, sweatshops, sex trafficking and so on – we ask how the Bible should underpin our own campaigning today. And how should it transform us, so that we go on to transform the world around us – whether the challenges are slavery or any other issue? As many of you support current initiatives like Stop the Traffik and Set All Free, we hope this will give you fuel for your thinking and responding. Let’s hear God’s agenda. Let’s be changed by it. And let’s get on with working it out in a needy world. Lindsay Shaw Bible Society Creative Resources Officer 2 Contents Session 1 The challenge of slavery past 4 Session 2 The Bible and the fight for freedom 9 Session 3 The black fight against slavery 21 Session 4 The challenge of slavery present 26 3 Session 1 Session 1: The challenge of slavery past Introduction became so familiar that no one really noticed her taking pictures, something quite forbidden Imagine flocks of rare birds soaring over the for any casual visitor. Amazon forest, their bright colours passing overhead like flashes of rainbow lightning. The She wanted to help the many children born chatter of insects, bird song and rustling of into these brothels to escape. She started by foliage is all that can be heard. Suddenly, the making an effort to see how they perceived forest’s tranquil beauty is shattered by a loud their situation. She gave cameras to a small crack, followed by another and then another. group of children and allowed them to take Several of the birds plummet into the thick mass pictures as they wished and then followed their of trees like thunderbolts, dead. Into the scene efforts up by giving the children photography come children, running and whooping with lessons. Their creativity blossomed and before excitement. Air-rifles are slung over their long exhibitions of their work were being held shoulders. The carnage has been a competition. in international galleries. With the finance from these Zana was able to offer them the Fast forward to another year. Air rifles have opportunity to receive an education which been replaced with binoculars given by would enable them to be liberated from the conservationists. Using these the children are environment into which they had been born. seeing things they had not realised existed: Thanks to the cameras, the children had details of plumage and even new birds they become new people both in their own eyes and had never seen before. Their game has changed those of others.1 from one of destruction to one of discovery. They are starting to see their surroundings These two stories, told in recent BBC TV through new eyes. documentaries,2 are not just examples of out- of-the-box thinking. They also mirror the way Imagine now a different scene; a crowded, the Bible brought fresh thinking to the dirty street with broken down houses, lurid visionary campaigners against slavery. lights and flashing signs advertising the existence of brothels. Women of various ages For slavery abolitionists like Wilberforce, and even very young girls stand, often Clarkson, Equiano, and many others, the Bible cowering, in the doorways waiting for custom. acted in similar ways to the binoculars and the Men sit drinking at shabby bars while small camera in these modern-day challenges. The boys dart in and out of the streets looking for Bible gave them a view of human slaves which opportunities to rob unsuspecting passers by. Into this red light district of Calcutta came 1 www.kids-with-cameras.org Zana Briski with her camera. Living amongst 2 BBC 2, 11 February 2006 and Storyville: Born into these people for two years she gradually Brothels, BBC 4, March 2006 4 The challenge of slavery past was radically different to the dominant view of their day. It also gave slaves themselves a vision The key to freedom of their real worth in God’s eyes and sustained Many of these early abolitionists were them in their campaign for freedom: prominent in the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society. This involvement The Bible is a saga of freedom. It tells the story demonstrated the central role that the Bible of man’s long struggle to throw off the shackles played in their own lives and in the fight of bondage and enter into the freedom of the for the abolition of the slave trade. As one sons of God …. This … is the character of the speaker said at the annual meeting Bible – a book breathing the love of freedom following the emancipation of the slaves, 3 and infusing its readers with the same love. “The Bible and slavery cannot co-exist. The Bible known and loved and lived must set The Unchaining Word explores some of the Bible the slave free.”4 teachings that enabled and inspired both abolitionists and slaves in the long struggle for freedom. 18th and early 19th centuries? To understand In looking at these, we also aim our binoculars why it took some 20 years to outlaw the and camera at our own world. Still one in callous trading in human lives and another 26 which over 12 million people live and work in to free slaves already employed in Britain’s contemporary forms of slavery. A world where colonies we need to understand the benefits racism and the inequalities between the Britain and other nations gained from slavery. developed and developing worlds continue as part of the legacies of yesterday’s colonialism. In some form or another, slavery has been And a world in which many other challenges carried out for thousands of years. It was often and opportunities small and large call for us to the basis for establishing civilisations, both as hear and heed the Bible afresh in our day. a means of punishing and controlling the conquered peoples. It was also a way of The Unchaining Word will help us to look again furthering economic progress through cheap at how the God of the Bible views his world. As labour. we do, who knows how God will change us and challenge us to be change-makers in his world In Britain, slavery was linked to a sense of today? national identity. “Rule Britannia” wasn’t sung for nothing. The British colonies and their Slavery’s defenders mercantile trade were strong. England’s greatest wealth came from sugar plantations that were Why was it that the anti-slavery campaign met founded on slave labour. This wealth helped to with such strong resistance at the end of the fund Britain’s naval force, essential for maintaining the empire and its trade. 3 These Remarkable Men; The Beginnings of A World Enterprise, John A Patten, pages 136–137 (London, Lutterworth Press, 1945) 4 Ibid. page 24 5 Session 1 position. Like someone using the binoculars Slavery: a definition the wrong way round and getting a smaller The League of Nations’ temporary Slavery picture instead of a larger one, they found Commission set up in 1924 defined slavery as justification from the Bible. They missed the “the status or condition of a person over Bible’s big picture of all people made in the whom any or all of the powers attaching to image of God. Self-interest and racism drove the right of ownership are exercised”.5 their use of Scriptures like those below: 1.